Serendipity
helped me help George in his modernization of the Vatican Observatory. The nun
who was the director assistant retired near the beginning of his role as
director, and George was looking for a laical (secular?) woman to replace her. I was
summering in Castel Gandolfo in those days as a guest of the VA and one morning
waiting for the train to Rome a young woman drove up and raced down to the track
in a hurry, and asked me if the train had passed yet. She was typically late for
the train which left one stop closer to her home at the edge of Albano, but when
it was really late she would race to the Castel Gandolfo stop. As an American,
obviously her curiosity immediately led to our friendship and adoption into her
circle of friends (the early 1980s). Her best friend Rita was not happy working
for Honda, and somehow I connected her with George and the rest was history.
Rita, very outgoing, changed the mood of the Specola and for its increasing
numbers of outside guests. Eventually they started doing half time at the Uof
Tucson where she met her American husband and they have 2 lovely daughters in
their twenties (for whom George was a grandfather figure). All from a single
chance encounter at a train stop.
But there is more.
Rita’s brother Sergio is my age, he got together with Bill (soon after I introduced his sister to the Specola) to design the logo for the VA.
Their father went to Columbia after the war to make his
fortune, then returned with his family to Castel Gandolfo where I became close
to them. George served as a father figure for Rita. Sergio now designs leather
art for motorcycle bags, accessories etc, was once the president of the Italian Harley
Davidson Club (regular guy members unlike the tough US membership).